


Quitting time

by heibai



Series: there's a first time for everything [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Existential Angst, M/M, a small cameo by taeten just because, just the next obvious step in the list of firsts, self discovery galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-14 08:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18048800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heibai/pseuds/heibai
Summary: “I have a friend and… I like him."Dare I say I love him,Renjun almost said, but he had a feeling that it will only cause the stranger to let out a burst of demeaning laughter at him so he swallowed the words and exchanged it with lighter, more acceptable ones, “but I don’t know if he likes me to the same extent as I do. I mean, I told myself in the beginning that I’m fine being his… hisanything, really. But well, the heart is the biggest liar and apparently… I’mnotfine,"or when Renjun learned the hard way that demons will only appear when you're alone.





	1. 01.

**Author's Note:**

> heads up: mild butt stuff awaits.  
> just a lil warning because i've traumatised my friends by not warning them that yes, this story is a very much spicy lolol.

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_“Do you feel anything?”_

 

_“No… I don’t think so.”_

 

_Truly, the last thing Renjun imagined could happen to him on a picturesque late autumn afternoon was to be lying on his back on the edge of Jeno’s plane-crash-wreckage of a bed with both of his legs pulled up and over his torso so far back he was practically hugging his knees. Naked legs, that was. Naked torso. Naked everywhere, really, with Jeno kneeling on the floor in front of his fully exposed bottom and probing at it, in it, with a much-too-lubricated latex-gloved finger._

 

 _“I read that if you press_ here,” _he emphasised the word_ here _with a low grunt and a crook of his index finger, and it caused Renjun to nearly leap off the bed with how much it felt like someone had just poked the entire length of a billiard stick up his anus, “it’ll feel good. Does it?”_

 

_Renjun only frantically shook his head in response to Jeno’s earnestly curious answer. Not a meep of sound, because he knew that if he opened his mouth, only profanities and bitter remarks that questioned Jeno’s sanity would lurch out of it. To his silence, Jeno gave out a tired sigh. As if he just came across an utterly adorable, perfectly willing to be driven car, which disappointingly failed to even hum to life after he twisted the key for the engine._

 

_Funny, because at the start of it all, they made fun of the concept of anal as it was essentially just pooping, backwards._

 

_“Have you ever thought, ‘oh, this poop is magnificent!’ I don’t think so!” Renjun remembered their conversation on that topic like it just happened yesterday. Not only because the content of it was much too bizarre to forget, but also because they were laughing so much, they risked being kicked out of their corner booth at the small cafe at the back of their school by the visibly irritated barista._

 

_“Or saw your own stool after you had a massive dump and thought, ‘apparently, that's the biggest I can go.’ That’s just silly.”_

 

_“And terrifying.” Renjun added after they’ve finished their fit of painfully loud, stomach-cramp-inducing laughter._

 

_And so, on that day, they both decided to not ever think of “the butt stuff”, ever again. Though if you want to take a bet, put all of your money on time and idle minds. Because it only took them two entire weeknights filled with some eye opening Google searches before Renjun and Jeno found themselves doing the impossible._

 

_Trying to have a crack on finding their own p-spot._

 

 _Renjun once again tried to wiggle himself away from Jeno’s peskily invading finger and that seemed to be the last straw for the both of them. Probably because Jeno could sense Renjun’s discomfort from way down there and took mercy on him, accurately surmising that his squirming was not the_ I want more _kind, but the l_ et’s get this over with _kind. A quick glance up was enough to confirm Jeno’s suspicion, because his eyes were already glassed over with a layer of almost-tears, because how could he not? Renjun felt like he was having a medical check up at a male sexual health clinic than anything else. Than doing anything remotely sexual, that one he was sure._

 

 _“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” he sighed after they’ d finished doing their telepathic conversation, done with the help of tiny up-turns of their lips, or small disturbances to their eyebrows._ (“Get out of my ass this second.” “But I’m not done, yettttt.” “Get out of mine right now or I won’t get into yours.”) _Following the snapping and rustling sound of him disposing the defiled latex glove, of which he stole dozens of pairs from their school’s nursing office, Jeno climbed up the bed. Taking his jolly time kissing the sad limpness on Renjun’s stomach, before he got the top of his head swatted when Renjun was done slipping into one of Jeno’s hoodie (that he had borrowed one too many times, by now it was essentially his) and he has not stopped on his futile attempt at appeasing the disturbed dragon on his bed._

 

 _“You just stuck a finger up my ass. I’m not really in_ the mood _right now, if you can’t tell,” Renjun said as he tried to evade Jeno’s snuggle attack by plopping his palm against Jeno’s puckered lips and pushing them as far away as he possibly could. Though, staying true to his work ethics, Jeno was relentless in his pursuit of Renjun’s forgiveness, of some sort. Trying to gauge the extent of the damage caused by his eagerness from seeing how quick Renjun melted when he gave his palm a warm nuzzle. Licks, wet smooches, kisses on each and every knuckles and nails… Jeno was such a cheat on that front because he should’ve known by then that Renjun was a complete sucker for little silly gestures like that._

 

 _“Get off!” Five seconds. Renjun managed to put up with only five seconds of Jeno’s saccharine sweet persuasion before he decided that if he didn’t want to have a finger stuck up his ass_ again, _he has to move quickly . And quickly he did move. With a maneuver executed so efficiently and gracefully it would make any professional MMA athlete envious, Renjun slipped away from Jeno’s smothering hug and pushed him face down onto his own bed. Renjun immediately sat on top of Jeno’s back, slightly flinching when his naked legs pressed against Jeno’s long sleeved tee that had been cooled by the late autumn air and used his knees to pin both of Jeno’s arms to stop them from creating a mutiny, not like it was even a possibility in the first place, as it was apparent that Jeno was more than content to be put in that kind of compromising position._

 

_Still, from the gap made between his flushed cheeks and his pillow, Jeno gave Renjun a flutter of his eyes. Only doing it because he knew it would rile Renjun up like nothing else. As if it wasn’t enough, he pouted his lips and presented himself as a kitten begging to not be punished after chewing up the backside of his owner’s leather shoes._

 

_“Have mercy.”_

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

  


_“... jun,”_

 

_“Renjun,”_

 

“Renjun!”

 

“WHAT?!” Renjun was fished out from his deep daydream with a loud yell and a jolt, only to see nearly half a dozen’s pair of eyes, or basically the entirety of his immediate family members who also doubled as the co-habitants of the small rented minivan he’s anchored his ass to for the last three days, staring at him as if his skin has just suddenly turned blue.

 

“... what do you want to get?” His dad asked in that certain tone parents would adopt after they’ve internalised an exhausted sigh over their offspring’s shenanigans.

 

Renjun gave his surroundings a quick scan and immediately tried to get himself up to speed with a fake cough when he caught the unmistakable colour combination of tomato sauce red and mustard yellow plastered all over drive-thru menu boards, “medium cheeseburger meal, thanks.”

 

He could still feel the calculating gaze of his dad’s lingering on him while he was relaying Renjun’s order to the crackly intercom, but evading it was easy. He just needed to pick up the kindle from his lap and pretended that he was too busy reading his new favourite book, _the Tale of Whatever it Was,_ written by _Mister Whoever He is_ to care. Renjun knew it because he’s done just that for the last three days he was trapped on that darned family road trip, and everytime it has worked like a charm.

 

But not then. Definitely not then.

 

“Soooo Renjun, you’ve been particularly silent on this trip,” his dad began his poorly masked attempt of coaxing some information out of what he must’ve thought was a child going through the highly emotional _‘I hate the world’_ phase of his adolescence with a no-brainer observation and a trademarked dad laugh to boot.

 

“It’s not like I’ve ever _been_ talkative.”

 

“Say that again?”

 

“Nothing,” he picked up his volume from a low mumble when he heard his dad’s tone also shot up to a near yell. It wasn’t because he was mad, no. It was because he had to compete with the ear-piercing sound of rubber tire skidding against a freshly painted row of pavement. But still. Old habits die hard and Renjun still has residues of trauma when his dad would yell at him when he lied about his failed elementary math tests and so any raise on his infliction was enough to get him to straighten his back and sweat out his anxiety by the bucket. “Nothing…”

 

“Renjun has a girlfriend, uncle,” Yukhei, his good for nothing cousin, the family’s resident peculiar green egg to Renjun’s salted ham, the kid who survived through his high school years based on charisma, uniqueness, and nerves alone (yes, you’re correct. He is missing talent), chimed in with something so terribly _false_ Renjun couldn’t stop himself from whipping his upper body around to shoot him down with a fiery gaze.

 

“No I don’t!” _And you have to take that back,_ his glare said. He hoped that the small head tilt was enough to intimidate this human personification of a pesky golden labrador, but Renjun should’ve known better than to hope that his measly attempt at scaring Yukhei would work. Because the brightness that bled into Yukhei’s words from his unbelievably wide grin easily defeated Renjun’s panic, forcing it to kneel and cower back to its lair in the face of such a blinding light. Besides, the kid is nearly one-and-a-half heads taller than Renjun so what else could he do? Bark?

 

“Ohhh. So _that’s_ why you’ve only been staring at your phone all this time, huh?” Renjun let out an undignified scoff to his dad’s off-hand comment, sounding more like he was choking on his own tonsils than the sound of someone feeling annoyed.

 

“I… I don’t do that!”

 

His mom was laughing. His auntie was laughing. His uncle, his dad, the ghost of his ancestors, all were laughing at his poor, poor attempt at remaining calm when he was in all actuality trying so hard to convince himself that his secret was still that. A secret. And not just a thinly veneered public knowledge that’s always been known by everyone but he himself.

 

“Aww, we’re sorry,” his mom, when she saw that Renjun has opted to sulk and curl himself so tightly against the window his nose was pressing against the dusty surface, reached back to his seat and gave his arm a rub. The gesture didn’t help in calming Renjun down, if his reaction to it wasn’t evident enough. In the contrary, her care only made him feel even more like _shit._ Because it amplified his desire to regress back to a childlike mental state and let out all his embarrassment in a counterintuitive act of making himself look more embarrassing by bawling out his eyes in a big tantrum. The perfect example of how _‘two negatives become a positive’_ can be applied in real life. But he was in no mood of being the runt of the group _and_ a dumping ground for self-pity, so Renjun just sharply shrugged her hand away and turned his body further to his right, hoping that the folds of his cascaded hoodie would be enough to hide the buds of tears already threatening to spill from his stinging eyeballs, “but really, are you in love with someone? It’s ok to tell us, you know.”

 

 _“God,_ mom, please! You know that you guys will be the first people to know when I get one,” he spat out, trying to sound as if he was insulted by the jeers, but ended up sounding more like a scared mouse than a growling doberman, which, to be fair, he wasn’t trying to emulate. He had to cough up the closing section of his sentence, because Renjun found out that his throat was closing up with how near he was to stepping a foot on Cry Baby Lane. “A girlfriend, that is…”

 

“You didn’t answer the question.”

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t hear his mom’s sing-song attempt at accusing him of diverting their conversation which, no doubt, he was red-handedly guilty of it. But just like how he’d picked up his eBook and once again pretended to read the gibberish word imprinted on the screen, Renjun too so easily put up the _‘I’m not hearing what I don’t want to hear’-_ filter and pretended that he didn’t hear anything more but his dad’s _‘here’s your cheeseburger, lover boy.’_ Even then, his brain managed to censor the last two mocking words said by his dad, because he somehow still could find it in himself the power to respond with a polite, “Thank you so much.”

 

Maybe it was because he realised that he still had another five days to look forward to, stuck inside this tin can hell of a minivan which Renjun had christened Thomasin, which is an abbreviation for _‘the Halls of Memories and Self-Introspection’_. He silently patted himself on his back for looking past instant gratification and not wasting all his patience on one pesky confrontation (as he was sure many more were yet to come).

 

Now… where was he?

  


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_“Have mercy,” stuck underneath him, Jeno pleaded in that one certain kind of voice he would always_ _use_ _when he wanted to make fun of Renjun._ The pig-tailed spoiled brat, _that was the term they decided to stick to that facet of Jeno’s personality, which came complete with a set of pouty lips and thick eyelashes batted like he has a pesky speck of dust nudged on the inside of his eyelid._

 

 _“When have I_ _ever not_ _?”_

 

 _In response to Renjun’s un-question, Jeno flicked his fingers up, as they were the only thing on his arms that he could move, and thrummed it on Renjun’s knees, “I beg to diff_ _—_ _ow!”_

 

 _Jeno should’ve_ _known_ _that by acting like a brat, he will be treated like one, too. True to his part, it only took one playful slap on his_ _polka-dotted_ _bum before he was left a lip-biting, back-squirming, mind-numbingly excited worm. “... horny_ _horndog_ _,” Renjun said._

 

_It was then Renjun’s turn to sort of scale his way down the bed, dragging with him the loose underwear from Jeno’s hips until they were tossed to the corner of the room with a simple flick of his ankles, joining the lump of week-old unwashed pajama pants with a near gleeful anticipation._

 

_“Here we go!” There was a giddy lightness to Jeno’s muffled exclamation, and deciding that he was feeling terribly… nice on that peaceful afternoon, Renjun affirmed his excitement by exchanging the mindless massage he was giving Jeno’s calves with another light slap on his goose-fleshed butt which Jeno then quickly raised, the moment Renjun snapped the dusty purple medical gloves securely onto his hands. Who knew that what before was just a mundane, even an anxiety inducing sound, could so suddenly take a very arousing tone when shined under the light of their special brand of play dates._

 

_There was an unmistakable air of urgency and familiarity in Jeno’s movement, one that can only be possessed by Pavlovian trained pups and it gave Renjun a slight feeling of relief, to know that at least one of them was super hyped with the premise of their current experimentations. Because if not, how boring would the day be?_

 

_“You cum guzzling whore.”_

 

“Your _cum guzzling whore.” Jeno retorted, giving Renjun’s still naked crotch a not-so-serious hit with a calculated upward jerk of his leg._

 

 _“Touch_ _é_ _.”_

 

 _Taking a page from what Jeno did to him earlier, Renjun began to swirl his lube-loaded, latex-clad fingers around the sensitive skin of Jeno’s bum and gave his entrance a light massage. He was enjoying his time and relishing each and every little_ _jump_ _that Jeno did, so little it seemed that he was unwilling to admit that after all of his boastings of research and preparation he still_ flinched _every time_ _the pad of Renjun’s index finger gave the sensitive perimeter something even just slightly stronger than a fleeting rub. But unlike Renjun, who has to be told to relax at least twenty times in that little crucial moment before the breakthrough, Jeno seemed to know when he himself was ready for next and was able to command his body to yield. It resulted in such a sudden and smooth entrance that Renjun just couldn’t hold his tongue back and blurted out his observations with a stifled giggle._

 

 _“Pop goes the weasel.” Renjun could tell, by the raise of his eyebrows and the quick bite of his lips, that Jeno was trying his best to_ _not_ also _join in on his already pittering laughter._

 

 _“Stop it,” Renjun was amused that they’d arrived at a point where Jeno’s hissing, which, if done near the beginning of whatever relationship they were having, would’ve left Renjun petrified on the spot with a peculiar mixture of fear, awe, and arousal,_ _now_ _failed to even trick Renjun to thinking that Jeno was mad at his antics, “stop!”_

 

_“Really?” The silence that followed his question held a degree of anticipation for something heavier than mischief, but far lighter than dominance,_

 

_“do you really want me to?”_

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

“Ma, can I go out with my friends later tonight?” Yukhei’s sharp, whiny voice was a sure-fire way to fish Renjun’s consciousness from swimming inside the pond of _‘trying to keep myself sane from all this sexual withdrawal’._ Though for this instance, it happened faster than it ever did before.

 

Renjun _was_ sticking his nose right up to the screen of his kindle, and he _did_ have two earphones stuck inside his ears. But as you know by now, he was _not_ reading, and for sure he was _not_ listening to anything else (the cable to his earphones wasn’t even plugged to his phone) but the two ongoing conversations happening at the same time. One, because he was in a constant state of worry that someone was talking smack about him, and two, because he found out that he’d completely exhausted the oxygen reserves within his own personal bubble and can’t stand being inside his head for anything longer than minutes at a time.

 

His mom was telling his dad about a gossip concerning the distant cousins they've just met (something about money laundering and owning a mandu shop), and Yukhei was trying to convince his own mom, that the person whose house he wanted to visit later that night was a trusted friend of his. And not some random drug dealing, twink stealing creep that he somehow met in the middle of their little midwinter family road trip

 

“You remember Ten don’t you Ma? The one that moved in tenth grade? Well…"

 

Renjun couldn’t help but let out a muffled chuckle because gosh darn it. Yukhei can be quite dumb at times. Knowing the fact that they've been staying at hotels, if he was in Yukhei's shoes, he would've just kept quiet, run away after everyone retired to their rooms after dinner, and return back to the building before anyone even had the chance to wonder where he was. But maybe that was why Renjun could never be Yukhei. And Yukhei could never be Renjun.

 

Because when his mom told him _, ‘of course you can,'_ he immediately dived in to give her a big hug, his long arms looping around her once with many to spare.

 

Renjun instinctively reached up to the centre of his sternum and tried to dispel the phantom tingles on his chest with the warmth of his fingertips as they were rubbing firmly against his hoodie. "Are you really nineteen," he whispered to himself, giving Yukhei a combination of an embarrassed leer, an amused scoff, and a jealous side eye. All the while his fingers wouldn't stop mashing the fatless layer of skin and bones underneath them _. Rub rub rub rub rub._

 

"Yukhei?"

 

"Yes, Auntie?"

 

"Will you take Renjun with you?”

 

For the last four days, on top of having to constantly live with being made fun of by every living relative that he met, Renjun also had to go through a whole _‘I have a chronic case of increasingly lethal heart attack’_ health scare. Indigestion, lack of appetite, short of breath, a lingering sense of dread that seemed to fill the cavity of his chest. Once, he stood up from a chair, felt a dull pain and a loud _badump_ of his heart and thought, _‘oh god, this is it.’_ And at that moment, when he heard his name being called when he least expected it to, related to a situation he never thought he could be a part of, he could feel and _hear_ his heart defibrillate so hard he had to cough to get it back to the tempo that it was beating earlier.

 

“Definitely!”

 

“W- wait! What?! Mom!”

 

“If he wants to, that is…” Yukhei quickly threw him a get-out-of-jail free card when he must’ve taken a quick glance at Renjun and saw that his eyeballs were threatening to shoot out of their sockets at any moment.

 

“You’ve been cooped up inside for too long! I think exploring the area will be good for you. Don’t you think so?” She punctuated her sentence with a nudging to his already nodding dad.

 

While _he_ punctuated _his_ by tapping the back of his kindle onto his open palm to every syllables of his sentence, “I. Am. Not. Yet. Le-gal.”

 

Beside him, Yukhei let out a light chuckle, “Do you think I am?”

 

But his lightness was quickly sapped when Renjun directed his bewildered eyes to his direction, quickly drawing out a sorry and an embarrassed glance to his dark phone screen. He probably was hoping to the technology gods when he frantically tapped the unresponsive home button, that he could be given one last burst of battery life so he could be spared the disturbingly scary gaze of a panicked Renjun.

 

_Badump._

 

“Mom. I don’t want to.”

 

“Why won’t you listen to me for once?”

 

_Badump._

 

“I think I’m getting sick.” Even though it did sound like a last ditch attempt at excusing himself from having to do something he didn’t want to, Renjun’s reasoning wasn’t completely a lie. He felt like _shit._ In that constantly rattling and rolling van, Renjun was at a constant state of mild nausea and he wasn’t seeking for an upgrade by staying up late and (most likely) drinking alcohol. Didn’t help that his heartbeat was getting so ominously heavy and loud he had to put his palm over his sternum through the entire duration of his argument with his mom, as he was afraid his aorta would snap and drop his heart to the bottom of his stomach at any given moment.

 

But Renjun’s hope that his mom could see and understand why he was looking paler-than-usual (and no, it wasn’t because of the lack of sunlight during winter) was quickly diminished when he saw that familiar eye roll and an expression of motherly exasperation fleeting through her face.

 

“Go, Renjun.”

 

_Badump._

 

“... Okay.”

  


_

  


The atmosphere when they both checked into their hotel room for the night was palpably heavy. And awkward. It seemed that the usually chill and laid back Yukhei could no longer stay inside the simmering pot of _‘general mixture of negative emotions’,_ because he quickly excused himself to the internet cafe downstairs. His excuse of ‘I need to send over something to my study group’ was steaming more than the fresh droppings of a bull as who was he trying to kid? _Study_ group? Renjun felt cheated that he was being lied to by a kid only one year his senior by something so poorly put together it felt like he was worth nothing more but a rent-by-the-hour baby sitter. _‘I’m not your mom. I understand,’_ he wanted to say. But he was feeling much too tired and high strung that an argument was the last thing he had in his mind. “I want to take a shower first.”

 

Yukhei gave him an understanding nod, “Meet me at 8 at the frontdesk, ok?”

 

 _“How nice of him,”_ Renjun let out one final wheeze just in time with Yukhei closing the door to their room with a bang. He resolved that everytime he was handed the much needed (and missed) solitude in this wretched family winter getaway, that he would guzzle down on every little bit of it as if it would be his last time tasting the sweet, sweet sense of freedom.

 

Quickly he unzipped his stuffy coat and unwind the suffocating scarf from his neck, throwing both of the accursed clothing items to the corner of the similarly accursed hotel room. He gave the ugly, neon yellow scarf one last hateful glance before he stepped into the criminally tiny en-suite. He would’ve burned the damn thing if not for the fact that his auntie would’ve choked him off with her bare hands if she ever caught him without one (he contemplated on flirting with said prospect because a quick death was much more preferable than the drone of dread that he had to suffer through all of his waking hours). Though he never understood why the numbness on his chest would never cease, even if he had nothing confining it in the physical realm.

 

It’s grown so bad in the past two days that every night before bed, Renjun’s been contemplating on sending Jeno a little farewell message because he believed, so surely, that he would have a fatal heart attack during the night and fail to wake up the next morning to give Jeno his usual dose of silly good morning greetings.

 

(But he never could. Because Jeno would send him a barrage of photos he took on his own winter holiday journey and it would cause Renjun to feel some sort of light elation that took his heart on a soar. And it was enough to make him realise, for a split second, that all his earlier worrying and googling symptoms of a cardiac arrest was just him being a hypochondriac.)

 

Though still, morning would come and the droning thrums of dread would return to his side, safely and securely, the moment Renjun had to discreetly deal with the messy aftermath of the disturbingly vivid dreams and memories of his time with Jeno to the sound of Yukhei’s loud snores and realise that he still has nearly half a week’s worth of exhausting family trip left.

 

Understandably, he was surprised when he found the answer to these pervasive symptoms not from a neurotic search through WebMD, but just from a close inspection of his own body on the tall mirror nudged at the bathroom corner of a small motel his family crashed in on the fourth night of their journey. When he somehow was given the time and strength to observe his surroundings, and not just to take a quick duck-wash before crawling under the scratchy budget duvet and wishing Yukhei, who was unfortunately assigned to be his permanent roommate for the entirety of the journey, goodnight.

 

Jeno would do this all the time, making him stand in front of the full length dressing mirror in his room. Sometimes even forcing him with a finger on his chin, to stand there and watch as he walked Renjun through the topographic map of his own body. Playing connect the dots with the circles of hickeys that ranged in colour from a deep red to muted brown, acting as important land markings of Jeno's favourite spots to meticulously dote over. “Don’t put it anywhere people might see,” Renjun remembered saying it when they first started to grow brave and were able to not crack up five seconds into looking at each other’s naked bodies. Jeno responded to his worry with a warm smile before fiercely sucking on the thin skin near the underside of his wrists, “It’s winter. Nobody will see.” And when Renjun showed him even the tiniest bit of genuine annoyance, Jeno would offer him his own arm and with it an invitation, “you’re very welcome to do the same.”

 

Without hesitation, Renjun leaned down only to give Jeno’s wrist a soft kiss, “And ruin this skin? That’s a criminal act.”

 

Renjun pressed his thumb on the circle of tender skin on his inner upper arm, digging his nails into the yellowing patch nearest to his armpit and used the sharp ache to better remember how he thought he was going to die from laughing too much when Jeno ignored his pleas to stop as, _‘I’m ticklish there,’_ because, _‘I want to hear you laugh.’_ It was less a plea and more a threat, really, what with the ample peppering of _fucks_ before and after the fact, but Jeno only responded by pinning him to the bed by his arms and slinging one leg over Renjun’s chest to keep him from wriggling away as he latched his mouth on the soft, rarely appreciated area of his underarm, and sucked at it until Jeno was happy with the severity of burst capillaries caused by his action.

 

"A farewell gift," he dared say after the deed was done and Renjun was left a teary-eyed mess trapped underneath the full weight of Jeno's toned legs, as he was resting them on his torso as if Renjun was his own living and breathing ottoman, "so you can remember me when I'm gone."

 

"It'll only be for two weeks, and it's _Japan,"_ it was an information they both knew and didn't need a reminder of. But Renjun felt like saying it because he needed something to calm himself down with the prospect of a major break to a big part of his daily routine looming so close on his horizon, "it's not like you're going off to war,-"

 

"Stop being dramatic. _Yes,_ I know," Jeno took out the words straight out of his mouth together with his breath when he leaned over to give Renjun's lips a particularly chaste kiss. He wished Jeno didn't do that on their last minutes together before they have to part ways for the next few weeks. Jeno to Japan for a family holiday and Renjun to a complicated family-visit road trip with stops covering the full range of the bottom half of the peninsula. He wished Jeno would just defile him, and let him be defiled in return, like they always did when they were short on time. Stop and go service, Renjun liked to call them, a quick lick and a pop, rub and dub, and off they went to their own separate destinations.

 

But of course, him being him, Jeno just had to put some time away from the hectic last-minute preparations and told Renjun that they could fool around for the entirety of the evening. At least until their respective families came home from work and berate them for still not having finished with their packing. The ample amount of free time between their games resulted in this. Wholesome moments under the last warm rays of the winter sun, so undeniably sweet it would've rotted Renjun's heart to the core if hearts are able to do so.

 

"Will you give me a token too?" He asked after relieving Renjun from the imposing weight on his chest and angling his body so now they were laying side by side on his disastrously messy bed. Renjun ran his fingers across the top of the chilly duvet that smelled thickly of Jeno’s shampoo and _him,_ only stopping when his hand found a nice settlement on Jeno’s naked hips. The expression on his face gave the promise of sweetness, but the words that escaped from his mouth proved otherwise.

 

“A bite on your dick, how about that.”

 

Maybe Jeno was already too exhausted, what with him directly frolicking in the land of sexual pleasures right after finishing his daily basketball practice, or maybe he was already too used with Renjun’s antics of using acerbic turn of phrases as a way to show his affection, but he responded with nothing more but a smile and a soft ruffle of Renjun’s hair to refute his painful offer. As if he was silently conveying that he was content just spending their last moments together doing what they were doing right then. Quietly slipping in and out of consciousness as they were slowly drowning inside an overflowing vat of satisfaction.

 

Though right before Jeno drifted into one of his lightning speed and light as a feather naps, Renjun remembered he did have one thing that could be good enough to be a token of remembrance for Jeno’s treacherous journey through the island of Japan. “Take my used underwear,” he whispered, a little bit too seriously when offering such a novelty item, and tangled his fully awake limbs with Jeno’s lifeless ones to prevent a giggling Jeno from rolling away to the other side of the bed, “wear it when you miss me.”

 

“I’ll wear it when I’m horny.”

 

“Fair,” Renjun said after he gave Jeno’s nose one last playful flick, one last kiss on the cheek before he let Jeno drift into one of his blissful cat naps.

 

(Absurd as it was, Renjun really went through with his promise. Leaving Jeno his underwear and going home commando style, which he soon regretted as it didn’t take long for his jeans to dig into his crotch and chafe it up to the high heavens.)

 

He always hated the look of those dark red spots on his washed out, yellowish skin. They made him look like he had an exotic skin disease where patches of it would shrivel up and peel with just the merest of touch. “Hickelosirosis,” Jeno would say that made-up word with an accompanying snort everytime Renjun whined that Jeno was only uglifying him so he would look better come swimsuit season, “a rare skin condition where people who contracted it would have their flesh turned into banana meat if their hickeys are not given a kiss once every day.”

 

Renjun used to only laugh at Jeno’s weird antics and find it as endearing if not a little bit grating but now look where he was. Staring at his desecrated body that was licked dry by all the sinning that he’s done.

 

Jeno was wrong. He didn’t turn into a banana when his skin wasn’t given its daily dose of kisses. Instead, he rotted. Rotten, rotten to the core. That was it. He finally figured out why he was feeling so shit this past few days. He was slowly _rotting alive_.

 

His skin looked like the bruises on a week-too-old apple and here he had to feel every fiber of his heart disintegrating, succumbing on the tar-like fungus that was eating the living tissue at a faster rate when he allowed himself to remember the memory of Jeno’s saccharine sweet _goodbye_ kiss before letting Renjun go and board his usual bus.

 

Jeno should’ve just ruined him. Suck him at the back alley of his house and then chased him off to the street without even letting Renjun get the three different kind of stains off of his jeans. They should’ve just ruined each other and called it a night because by doing what he did, Jeno had inadvertently opened the strictly guarded chest at the gaps between Renjun’s ribs, mindlessly smashing it to pieces and letting out this vicious monster that was corroding his heart into nothing.

 

Just guilt, sin, and emptiness at the core of his stomach so deep it might’ve developed its own gravitational pull.

 

He hoped that Jeno was suffering just as much as he was.  

  
  


 

_ _ _

  
  


 

Renjun still remembered the night after they had their bathtub escapade as clearly as the bottom of a well chlorinated swimming pool. Crystal clear but stings on the eye if you open them for one second too long. To be fair, how could he ever forget? He legitimately thought he was going to die from how severely his heart was beating against his ribcage as he lay on his own bed, awake long after his usual bedtime has passed.

 

“I’m dying,” Renjun remembered whispering on a voice note to Jeno. His thumb shaking so hard it took him three attempts before he could successfully send it to the person who made him feel so bad and yet was the only one who could save him from the bottomless pit he found himself falling into. “I can’t see, I can’t breathe, I feel like throwing up, I didn’t know what I was doing, I shouldn’t have done it to you, _I’m sorry.”_

 

It was nearly 4 in the morning so Renjun was surely surprised when his phone lit up with blinks and buzzes of an incoming call not even a minute after he’d sent his message. He was sure that the time it took for Jeno to call him was that of the length of his note. But Renjun didn’t have the time to mull over why Jeno was awake at that ungodly hour because he was busy sobbing into his pillow over the sound of Jeno’s calming shushes.

 

(He also didn’t want to _know_ why Jeno was awake on such ungodly hour because his heart wasn’t ready to accept the implication behind his _why.)_

 

_“It’s okay, Renjun. We didn’t do anything wrong.”_

 

“I’m going to _heeeeell,”_ Renjun couldn’t stop himself from whining, dragging the last word of his sentence into a long, high pitched note before it broke into even smaller sobs.

 

Renjun imagined that once he died, he would have the honour to be personally greeted at the gates of hell by Satan (because he figured that Satan would have the ability to duplicate themself and would place a clone in front of the gate, as he was sure Satan would love nothing more than seeing the look of horror on people when they finally realise they’ve landed their asses in hell. The amusement of it all is the reason why Renjun theorised that Satan would never give up the gatekeeping duty to any demon, be it lowlife or high-ranking. Or a three headed dog).

 

“What did you do to end up here?” He’d ask with a nearly perverted sense of curiosity.

 

“Loving cock.” Renjun’d answer.

 

“Quality.” And with a quick check on his long list of sinners, Renjun would be lead to the scene where he’d spend the rest of eternity in, forever dancing on a barren wasteland of burning sand while being pelted by a rain of fiery rocks from above.

 

Renjun remembered feeling a similar bout of existential crisis when he first discovered the earthly joy called masturbation when he was a wee thing of three and ten. Running to his dad after a week of simmering in his own self-made soup of guilt and terror asking if he would turn blind and have his ashes flushed straight to hell once he’d die.

 

After five seconds of mind-numbingly thick and awkward silence, his dad broke off into a laughing fit so loud and potent it was the only instance where Renjun’d ever seen his dad cry. His dad then said, after he’d wound himself down far enough that he no longer was coughing out his sentence in broken syllables, “if they still decide to make it a grave sin then well, have fun containing the entirety of the human population since the dawn of time in hell!”

 

And that was that. Renjun never would’ve known that it only took him one horrible moment of realisation that his dad had also (and probably still did) masturbated to bring a sort of… weirdly tranquil calm into his previously stormy mind.

 

But this was a different case. If masturbation was a storm of self questioning and confusion, then what he did with Jeno was a level five, finger of the God case of a tornado epidemic. On top of that, it wasn’t a turmoil that could easily be solved by confiding to his dad. Or his mom, even. Because yes. What happens after death is uncertain, but the certainty of life was so much so that it was passable if Renjun decided to ignore one and focus more on the other. The wrath of his dad and the disappointment of his mom if he ever came out to them were so palpable the mere thought of it was enough to send a sharp pang of physical pain onto his chest.

 

Raising his parents’ discontent was a surefire way to create hell on earth. How could he know this, you might ask? Well, Renjun wasn’t stupid, he’d spent a few good times dipping his toe on the lake named _‘_ _Would_ _my parents be okay if I say I’m gay?’_ The answer is no. No, they will not be okay. He still remembered the words his dad said in accordance to that topic. _“Thank God nobody in my family is like_ that _. I don’t want to know what I’ll do if it’s not the case.”_ That shut him up real quick. And the noddings of his mom ensured his eternal silence.

 

“I dragged you down to hell…”

 

 _“You didn’t,”_ it was clear from how muffled his words came through Renjun’s speaker that Jeno was trying to stifle a laughter that he knew had no place being in such a serious conversation, _“you didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t do_ anything _wrong. Also, if you don’t want_ _to_ _then we don’t have to do it ever again- ”_

 

“No.”

 

_“... Huh?”_

 

“No,” Renjun repeated his rebuttal with more defiance the second time around. He wiped the remaining tracks of tears off his cheeks and picked himself up to his elbows so Jeno could hear his voice better, and in turn be convinced of the resolution behind his request, “tomorrow. Your place. Let’s do it again.”

 

_“... Are you sure? We don’t have to do it if,-”_

 

“This is a sickness, isn’t it? Then the only way to cure it is to raise my immunity to it.” Yes, Renjun resolved. They’d do it again, and again, and again, and he’d build a tolerance for their brand of filth that was high enough to keep himself from hurling his body into a pit burning with holy fire. Just the way he did with masturbation. Or watching porn. Or saying curse words. Or telling harmless white lies. Or wishing harm for people who wronged him. All sins, all wrong, but all of them things that wouldn’t harm people unless he actively seeked for it to do so, unless he literally whipped his dick out in the middle of a busy intersection and became the center of a massive car pile-up.

 

And by the time he was standing in that dingy motel room by himself, Renjun’d done it with Jeno so many times now, their little experiments. So much so that it had turned into something of a daily routine for the both of them. So why, oh why, did Renjun still feel such a deep sense of self-loathing for the harmless activities that he’d been doing with Jeno?

 

It wasn’t that big of a deal when he could easily seek for the comfort and solace of Jeno’s touch. Everytime the seed of doubt sprouted at the bottom of his heart, Renjun would stomp on it with all the might he had, suffocate it by kissing Jeno so deep they got out of it in broken gasps. But now that he was alone? The seed quickly grew into a sprout, into a branch, into a small nursery, before it finally shed its qualm and flourished into a lush forest that took all of Renjun’s oxygen depository for its own deep rooted needs.

 

Why did it happen? Why had it turned out to be this way? Was this just longing disguised under a ghastly ugly veil? Was this just a really nasty case of blue balls? Withdrawal from his usually high level of endorphin?

 

Or was it really just his mind finally letting out the mountain of sin that has accumulated behind the thin walls of his heart, letting him feel every single one of the dead seeds that has been crushed to oblivion underneath the sole of his feet yet each particle still inescapably distinguishable, one from the other. Every painful kiss, every painful touch, every painful declaration of love.

 

Love.

 

Isn’t everything under the label of love, pure? Isn’t everything done in the name of love, good? It is, isn’t it? It says so in the good book, isn’t it?

 

Well… that’s the problem.

 

Renjun never really knew if Jeno truly loved him or not.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!
> 
> Without me knowing it I've put the entirety of my heart into this story and aaaaaa this story (and in extent, this series), means the world to me ;u;  
> I guess it's a given by now but the title of this story comes from a song by Cheeze of the same name.


	2. 02.

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

 _"Really?” There was a little bit of childish mischief hidden behind Renjun’s threat._ _Jeno’s_ _disproportionate response only sparked Renjun to let out an even louder laughter, “do you really want me to?”_

 

 _Jeno shot Renjun a sharp glare that screamed_  don’t you dare. _But the little jumpy fingers that grasped the wrist of Renjun’s free hand told a different story that was soon continued when he dropped his head back down into the mattress as the finger in him wiggled ever so carefully forward. Only then did his gaze_ _mellow_ _out,_ _take_ _a hundred and eighty degrees turn and became a look of gawkish terror trapped in the middle of a pleasured gasp._ _Thanks to_ _a cruel trick of fate and an ample amount of luck, Renjun managed to find the jackpot on his first try._

 

 _“Did you…,- have you been playing with it?!” Jeno only managed to do one single, measly nod before he had to further burrow his head into his pillow so as not to, according to Renjun,_ ‘disturb the neighbors’.  _Not only was he fueled by the fascination of how severely Jeno’s body was reacting to something so simple as a_ _coy_ _tap, tap, tapping motion of his index finger, there was a little bit of annoyance_ _too_ _mixed into the reason why Renjun then proceeded to double down on his effort, as Jeno’s craftiness for not telling him that he’s been getting his body used to the foreign sensations has left Renjun feeling cheated out of some good play time. And to think that his research was all paper based. How foolish of him._

 

_Without giving too much thought, Renjun used his newfound power to slowly wiggle in another finger as he reached under the small gap between the bed and Jeno’s tummy with his left hand so he could rub him off all while he had two fingers stuck up his ass so far Renjun could’ve tickled the inside of Jeno’s adam’s apple if he wanted to._

 

 _At first Renjun did that, pulling their experiment up a notch with peripheral accessories, that was, because he thought it was the correct thing to do. After all, shouldn’t a sexual affair be, well, as sexual as it can be? But thinking back_ _,_ _Renjun realised that what he did was more akin to torture than anything else. He should’ve known, because no sane person would’ve_ _scrunched_ _their bed cover so hard they popped from the top corners. His eyes were so firmly shut tears were starting to well at the edges, and his teeth_ _were_ _clenched tight around a section of his pillow as Jeno was chasing after one thing and one thing only, while at the same time was also being chased by the fear of having to face a level of pleasure so much stronger than he previously thought he could ever bear._

 

_There was a sliver fear hidden behind Renjun’s joy in seeing Jeno scrunch his eyebrows in pain that came from hypersensitivity and distress, twist his body in a genuine effort to get himself away from Renjun, or how about those little muffled pleadings of his? Everything, every single thing was making him inexplicably more aroused that he reached a point where the only option he had was to take his torture even further or back it all the way down to the realm of mercy._

 

_The fear came from the fact that he didn’t immediately know which to choose._

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

 _‘How’s your holiday?’_ _  
_ _H.R.J_

 

_‘lmao are you /that/ bored?’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘Am I that easy to read.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘you only ever hit me up when you’re bored_

_what is it?_

_i’m going out to dinner soon so make it quick’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘Nothing._

_I’m stuck at a house party with my cousin.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘talk with people then_

_flirt_

_get laid_

_drink free booze’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘Bad friend.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘/you’re/ bad_

_cheating on me with your lover boy_

_bros before hoes man_

_clique before dick_

_*dicque’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘Ew stop it._

_Gdi I’m so bored.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘lover boy not answering your message?’_

_N.J.M_

  


 

_‘i take your silence as a yes’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘He doesn’t have data.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘classic_

_yo man i gotta go but im telling you_

_try to have fun tonight_

_you’ve been living in a bubble for so long im telling you’_

_N.J.M_

 

_‘Haha yeah thanks for telling me that._

_Mom.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘IM SERIOUS_

_talk with a stranger_

_have some drunk counselling or something_

_that shit’s high level eye opening_

_what happens in daegu stays in daegu anyway_

_ok gotta go BYE’_

_N.J.M_

  


Renjun did tell his best friend about his moral crisis. Though maybe, because of his long standing, imaginary one-sided feud with Jeno and him having a  _‘he stole you from me’_ syndrome, Jaemin’s only word of advice to him was to  _‘go out there and get laid by someone other than that insufferable prick.’_

 

“You don’t actually hate him, do you?” Renjun asked him once when they were having their weekly catch-ups in a small cafe at the corner of their housing complex. Jaemin was in such a bad mood that day that in order to survive the long span of painful silences, Renjun’d nearly chewed through the entire length of his drinking straw, “because I won’t be able to live in a world where you hate my partner of choice.”

 

The pout that Jaemin brandished when he took a sip of his iced americano was so pronouncedly forced it brought relief to Renjun’s anxious self before he was able to let out even one word of explanation. “He’s creepy.”

 

“What,- how even?”

 

“He’s too perfect,” the sound of him aggressively stirring his coffee masked the barely mumblish tone of his voice, “nothing too perfect can ever be good.”

 

The gravity of their conversation instantly evaporated when Jaemin then started a heated tirade about how he suspects that Jeno is a serial killer in disguise. “You had my attention only to ruin it…”

 

Often Renjun would hypothesize that the reason for why Jaemin was acting so irrationally when his romantic life was the topic of their conversation was because he had a secret crush on him, or on Jeno, or on the  _idea_ of keeping him a clueless and blind prude that would bloom in pink blushes in the merest mention of anything sexual. He would’ve believed all that, if Jaemin wasn’t already in a similarly sickening-sweet relationship with a guy two years their senior.

 

So they honestly had nothing against each other here. Jaemin had nothing against Renjun for being confused in his first ever relationship that consisted of something more than hopeless pining and a near stalker-ish level of obsession and Renjun too had nothing against Jaemin as he somehow understood how frustrating it must be for him to take care of such a love-stricken, clueless fool. Nothing.

 

“Get laid, get laid… you think it’s easy?” Renjun huffed as he threw his body onto the leather sofa at the back of the surprisingly modern and criminally spacious study room aka the room that was least filled with bubbles of barely legal university kids. First years, he guessed, because they all still looked far too excited to be able to drink alcohol out in the open. Renjun himself was holding a bottle of beer inside his grubby hands, Yukhei insisted that he had to have one when they walked through the front door of his friend’s house (mansion, really). He had to say, with the current state of his mind, Renjun appreciated Yukhei’s eagerness to get him wasted. Though it wasn’t long before he predictably lost interest in his promise of accompanying the quiet Renjun in a vastly strange environment, and took the first opportunity to hitch himself off on his wild goose chase to meet with his long lost elementary school-slash-secret billionaire friend, Ten ( _‘what kind of name is_ that _,’_ Renjun caught himself mumbling when they first arrived). No biggie, though. Because no matter how often Jaemin tried to hook him up on the idea of how fun it was to have a careless one night adventure to open up his  _“””narrow horizon”””,_  Renjun still much preferred the company of his own self.

 

After he was sure that he’d found the perfect little corner for him to blend into the background which wasn’t a hard thing to do with the slippery surface of the sofa constantly guiding him to end up stuck inside its lowest corne. And he leisurely watched people until he had to drag Yukhei back to their hotel, Renjun added to his earlier sentence with a echoey mumble poured forth into the small neck of his beer bottle, “I can’t even hold a conversation with a stranger for more than 5 minutes.”

 

“That sounds like a challenge for me.”

 

Renjun would’ve choked on his beer if he had any in his mouth. Luckily, he didn’t. But unluckily, he was in the process of sipping some and so he only stared at a well meaning stranger, who’d planted his nice ass on the empty side of the sofa, for around five painfully awkward seconds with a pair of wide, panicked eyes and his mouth pouting around the neck of a glass beer bottle.

 

“I’m sorry for surprising you!” Thankfully, the stranger took the first initiative to burst their bubble of awkwardness with a sharp slap of his thigh and an equally ringing laughter. Because if not, Renjun didn’t know what he would’ve done. Slowly develop the power to shift between dimensions and disappear forever, maybe? Probably, absolutely. Yes.

 

 _“N.. N-no!_ No, no  _I’m_ sorry,” Renjun managed to push out his own brand of apology through the rigid screen of embarrassment. All it took was for him to force it out of his throat with a few coughs and a hand waving lightly over his flushed face. He didn’t want to look weird for not reciprocating the stranger’s kind gesture of elevating the atmosphere and so he too let out a weak giggle. Painfully faked or not, at least they were laughing  _together._

 

Renjun had to bite his lower lip to stop himself from letting out a surprised gasp, or to harshly chide this careless stranger, for putting his condensed glass of what he guessed was home-mixed long island iced tea, from the colour and the fact that his cheeks were well flushed in the classic colour of an  _elevated_ individual, on the arms of the leather sofa that must’ve costed more than Renjun’s net worth to date. Thankfully, his mind was taken away from the borderline criminal act by the reckless-stranger’s question.

 

“Have we met before?” The stranger asked, tilting his head and resting it on the back of the hand that was holding his much beloved drink and Renjun couldn’t help but let a single thought sprint past all security measures and splat itself onto the forefront of his consciousness.

 

_Holy shit, he’s fucking hot._

 

So much was happening at the same time that Renjun didn’t know where to focus his eyes on. How good the stranger looked in his effortlessly effortful semi-casual garb? His index finger that was dangerously twirling around the surface of his drink? Sending melting ice cubes to clink against the thick glass and rivulets of water to roll down the curve of the sofa’s armrest? The faint song that was lilting out of a vintage vinyl? Not to mention the fact that Renjun was starting to float inside despite how little alcohol he’d ingested. It was on that night when Renjun’s found out that his mind has a ceiling for informational input before it shut down and adopted an emergency, narrow-sighted protocol. To hell with trying to decipher subtle ticks of human interaction. At that moment, he was operating solely on the surface of it all. And so Renjun answered, with a stiff grin hanging crooked on his face,

 

“No, we haven’t.”

 

A beat of silence passed through them which, Renjun failed to notice because he was too busy trying to tidy up the mess of his brain (a bunch of loose papers were strewn all over the place with only one thing written on them:  _oh my god, he’s fucking hot_ , ad infinitum). It wasn’t until the stranger let out another snort of laughter before he realised what action he was expected to do.

 

“Oh,  _oh right,-_  right, I’m Renjun. Nice to meet you,” he said, more like stuttered, as he used the puffy pad of the sofa to bounce himself away from its corner and invited the stranger into an awkward, dad-style handshake that was a degree too firm and too moist-palmed.

 

“Ten. Nice to meet you, too.”

 

“Ten… that’s a unique name,” his mumble was accompanied with a faint squeak as his jeans-clad legs slowly slid back to the pull of one of the stronger blackhole of any household objects, the sofa corner. “Wait a second- Yukhei is looking for you!” Renjun shot his arm straight up and pointed his index finger on the cross eyed Ten.

 

“I’ve met him, I’ve met him,” his voice was as gentle as the way he waved Renjun’s rigid arm away from his sight. It wasn’t really obvious to any casual onlookers, but it was clear that Renjun’s awkwardness and neuroticism somehow caused his conversational partner to loosen up his demeanor even more. Ten then leaned back onto his share of armrest and tilted his drink in the direction of Renjun as a substitute for a more formal addressing, “hey, have you asked your mom if it’s okay for you to drink?”

 

There was a silent scoff stuck at the back of his throat when Renjun spoke next, “I’m eighteen, not eight, thank you very much.”

 

“Riiiiight, and I’m the pope.” Renjun never would’ve guessed that out of all things, the one that brought him back to reality was the way Ten drawled out his  _i_ on the word  _right_. Renjun landed hard on his bum right when he snapped his tongue at the end of the word.

 

Snap, crackle,  _pop._

 

_Hey kiddo, that’s how Jeno says his ‘right’ every time he’s making fun of you._

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

He forgot that this Ten dude seemed to have the hearing prowess of a cat, what with him earlier managing to catch his low mumble from a particularly great distance. And so, Renjun could only course correct by once again awkwardly waving his hands around and apologising with a quick shrug and a pitiful smile, “sorry, nothing, just… talking to myself.” Not wanting to end the conversation trail on something so low, Renjun chucked a quick, out of the place compliment, “nice house, by the way.”

 

He was sure that Ten had an expression that signified his bafflement at Renjun’s absolute inability at conducting himself in a social setting. He was  _sure_  of it. It just proved to him that Ten really was too nice of a person when he quickly shook his head and said his thanks in return.

 

But as payment for his ineptitude, Renjun had to be plunged into a simmering pot of  _a strangers’ silence,_ the brand of silence that he hated the most when both parties knew they wanted to break it but was unable to, as they were afraid that the next silence that comes after their attempt of elevating the one before would be final.

 

Renjun was silently cursing at Jaemin for ever putting in the thought that he could,  _and should,_ open himself up to the wildness of life and experiment, as for the last two months his mind has been too busy battling the silent thought of wanting  _more_ from Jeno that once it was forced to do  _exactly that,_ it instantly went into a fatal anaphylactic shock _._ More of  _what,_  he wasn’t entirely sure himself, because he hasn’t even allowed the wish to be fully formed into something as base as a concrete thought. Only a nebulous cloud of vague wants and needs that were easily subdued with a kiss and a hand hold or a cuddle under Jeno’s weighted duvet.

 

He wasn’t made for the wilder side of life. Because look at him. Look at them. Two strangers at a party with a dark, quiet setting where even their own voices are muffled from the wall-to-wall linings of old, thickly bound books, with both their minds already under the bewitching spell of intoxication, and they only sat at their respective corners on a long sofa, mindlessly staring at the screen of their own phones. Didn’t help that as seemingly supper or late night snack was being served in the dining room, they were practically alone, ensuring that Renjun didn’t have anyone he could ask for some help from. If he was wild, if Renjun really wanted to be wild, he would say something in the likes of,  _“your sweatpants_ _don’t_ _really match the mood of the party,_ _do they_ _?”_  or  _“do you live by yourself here? Must be pretty lonely”_ or something in the likes of that. A poorly masked attempt to make his conversational partner offer him a stay for the night. Or for him to accept a challenge that involves the shedding of one’s outer clothings.

 

But he wasn’t like that. Also, Renjun  _didn’t want_ that.

 

Or did he?

 

Renjun was not Jeno’s boyfriend, and vice versa. At least not  _yet._ So what was the basis of his did not want or cannot be? It would be the biggest lie ever told if Renjun said that he didn’t miss feeling the touch of another human being on his body. It would be a lie if he didn’t wonder how this Ten-stranger-person’s fingers would feel trailing against his cheeks, coiled softly around his neck, how he would flinch when the still cooled pads of his stubby fingers pressed tightly against his naked sternum. They looked far stronger than Jeno’s. More sturdy, less spindly. Would he use them in a rough manner? Renjun hoped he would. He seemed to be a person that didn’t see the point of asking, and in return Renjun wouldn’t have to provide an answer or a confirmation or a permission. He would just take, and take, and take and Renjun would just have to learn to admit that he loved it all along.

 

Renjun said that his crisis stemmed from him being ill. Well, all this time he’s only ever exposed himself to a single strand of virus. Maybe, just maybe, he needed to familiarise himself with even  _more_ strands.

 

Renjun didn’t realise that he’s been staring at Ten, not until he raised his arm to call in another stranger that peeked his head through the gap of the door to his study room. Stranger? How dare he call an  _angel_ a stranger. He truly was in a dire need to walk the earth and see more with his own eyes because to think that he’d found the epitome of human beauty on Jeno? How crass. How naive. How… uneducated. Because just then a red haired beauty walked into his vision and Renjun was hopelessly, unsalvageably awestruck.

 

“T! You were looking for me?” Ten exclaimed, beckoning this T person,  _deity,_ to come closer. His fluff of a slightly washed out red hair bobbed along the yellowish hue of the capped table lamps and he looked like he was not of this world. Renjun would’ve believed him more if Ten told him that he had a house elf that could grant him any wish he ever wanted, if this person was the personification of Ten’s welcoming house that was clad in warm-toned decorations and mahogany tables. Marble statues with smooth, impeccably sculpted jawlines. Long, pale, slender fingers that slipped between strands of jet black hair like a ghost slipping between ashen pillars of long forgotten ruins, and Renjun could only sit there in shame as he saw this apparition elegantly descended to grace his rosy lips on the lips of his one-night acquaintance. And to think that he wanted this man to want him when he already has everything that the world could offer. Silly.

 

“I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to go to bed early,” ignoring Ten’s adorably awkward protest of  _‘not in front of the kids’,_ this  _‘T’_ person answered in something way too composed for someone who just did a quick makeout session in public. Though maybe, when you’re a fifteen, a ten is a … well…

 

“Who is this?” The last thing Renjun wanted was for the red haired elf-like person to avert his attention to him. Because in the interim where  _nobody_ paid any attention to him, Renjun’d placed a small throw pillow onto his lap and he didn’t  _want_  to do anything that would compromise the position of said throw pillow on his lap.

 

“Ah! Sorry,- it’s your fault that I forgot to introduce him, ok,- Renjun, meet Taeyong. Taeyong, Renjun. He’s Yukhei’s… Wait. Who are you to Yukhei?”

 

“C… cousin,” Renjun said as he leaned forward as far as he could to capture Taeyong’s fair hand into his own, and the only thing he could think of when they were being shaken was how amazing his lips would’ve felt pressed against the pulse point of his neck. With Ten holding his arms down to keep him from wiggling away. And Jeno ravaging him on the southern front with his own pretty lips.

Ok.  _Ok,_ he told himself,  _this is not the time for those kind of thoughts, Renjun._

 

Though those kind of thoughts were just a given when he had an angel smile at him with one of the warmest smile to ever grace his very being, “Well, have fun. I hope we can spend more time getting to know each other next time around?”

 

“Absolutely,” Renjun said with a much too wide grin on his face. It twitched a little bit when he saw Taeyong going in for a much shorter round two (but still, it was a round two), before he put up a wooden wave to accompany Taeyong’s much regrettable exit from the room, “absolutely…”

 

Renjun really didn’t want to open himself up for another conversational branch but a part of his brain seemingly was acting on its own because the next thing he knew, he essentially was creeping his way to Ten with a look on his face best described as someone who was being too eager to  _know,_  “is he your… your… your boyfriend?”

 

From how Ten was pushing his back slightly more against his armrest, it was clear that he at the very least was feeling slightly put off with Renjun’s sudden change in demeanor, “You can say so.”

 

There were so many questions swimming inside Renjun’s brain.  _“Where did you meet?” “How did you know?” “What did you do?” “How did you decide on it?” “Do you like me?” “Do you think he likes me?” “Do you love him?” “What_ is _love?”_

 

Although he should’ve known, too much of something only made himself clam up in response. Renjun could only close his mouth shut, averting his quickly cooling gaze and hanging his head low before pulling himself back to his cozy corner. This time, his lapse of attention towards his immediate surroundings allowed him to loosen up his act so he could fold up his legs near his chest in a vain effort to seek for comfort.

 

“You… oh my god,- you know what?” His lapse of attention also, sadly, caused Renjun to fail to notice an incoming strike until it was far too late to stop. And he found out that it was true. He  _did_  flinch when Ten’s fingers landed on his flushed skin. Though unlike in his fantasy, his reality’s version of Ten latched his cold palm over his red ears, the pads of his fingers pressing comfortably against his nape and a thumb on his temple, alleviating the little pounding headache he never knew was there until it no longer was. And his lips. How could Renjun ever forget about his lips? Wine, vodka, a little fizzle of lemon and coke and the bite of a long finished cigarette, all mingled with the bitter taste of Renjun’s beer and he quietly thought that this is what it feels like to grow up. “There. Feel better?”

 

He should’ve. He now had another viral strand under his belt, right? He listened to his friend’s advice to go and be more adventurous, right?

 

But the kiss felt too good, and the sin felt too heavy, that Renjun was legitimately afraid for the safety of his heart as it snapped and fell through its cage and into the pool of his stomach acid, as he broke down in front of a stranger, whilst said stranger scooped him up into an unhesitant embrace filled with nothing else but same-hearted understanding.

 

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 _Renjun felt bad. He felt really, really bad. But there was a very big reason for why he couldn’t stop._ _Jeno would’ve killed him if he did._ _Oh, who was he kidding._  He  _would’ve killed himself if he stopped and didn’t see this come to an end. If he didn’t see, with his own eyes,_ _how_ _Jeno’s face would look like when he leaped from, at that time, the tallest tower that Renjun’d ever managed to bring him to. The least he could do then was to guide him off of it in the least agonising manner possible._

 

_“Turn over,” his earlier plan to bring forth a little bit of menace in his tone as a way to toy with Jeno’s sensitive psyche (and in extension, as a way to exact revenge) was ruined when Renjun saw how much he struggled just to flip his body over to his back. Well, there was also the fact that Renjun didn’t pull out his fingers as Jeno was doing his rotation, but still. The moment Jeno flinched when his heated back, exposed as his tee has ridden up and pooled around his armpits, came in contact with the untouched, chilly side of the bed, Renjun was a goner. Smitten, fallen, heart-skewered-on-a-stick gone._

 

 _“You’re awfully quiet today,” Renjun popped off the glove from his free hand with the help of his teeth and used it to clear Jeno’s drenched face from the unruly strands of his hair, revealing with it the extent of his distress that he was trying to contain. Seemingly sensing that he was being talked to, as surely the channel of his ears to his brain has shut down the moment Renjun stuck his second finger in, Jeno slowly opened his lead-coated eyelids and tried his best to locate and lock his gaze with Renjun’s. Trembling eyeballs and all. “Oh, Jeno…” The way Renjun said his name then was so different from the times he did before. Not desperate, not embarrassed, just a dose of adoration high enough that it nearly made him go all aww. He then let the middle of his sentence hang loose, free to be stitched with a_  ‘look how red your face is,’ or ‘look at the mess you’ve made,’ or ‘look what you made me do.’ _But he looked so innocent, lying helplessly on a pillow that was drenched with his own saliva, brain already scrambled to the high heavens he could only answer Renjun’s questions of_  ‘are you okay? Is this good?’  _with mindless grunts and lip-bitten nods, cheeks an angry shade of red that_ _was_ _streaked with faint trails of powder from where Renjun ran his fingers carefully across, that he didn’t have the heart to chide him, not even in jest. And so Renjun only pulled_ _him_ _closer, making sure that he didn’t break the rhythm of his fingers when he did so, all the while stroking Jeno’s back and only letting out encouraging shushes in response to his desperate whimpers._

 

 _He wanted to ask Jeno if it was okay for them to reach the peak together. If it was okay to get on top of him and exchange his fingers with his cock, and be the one to take someone to the top for a change. For a day, he won’t be the one being dragged around cluelessly through the fog but one who holds the high powered strobe flashlight that leads the way. It would’ve been fine. Jeno would’ve said yes,_  please, thank you, took you long enough, _and it would’ve been magnificent. But Renjun could only lay there by his side, petrified by the string of events that were far too special for him, for_  them _, to miss. He watched as Jeno curled his body even tighter, his fingernails digging into the skin of his arm so much that Renjun was starting to fear that blood could soon be drawn. Jeno managed to exchange the corner edge of his pillow with a mouthful of their shared hoodie before a long whine seeped through the damp cloth and hissing breaths._

 

_Renjun kept his fingers inside until he no longer felt any warmth dripping onto the side of his knee, which he’d been using as a substitute for his left arm in administering some sort of attention to the spot that deserved it most. Instinctively, he went and gave Jeno a deep kiss when he took his fingers out and he twitched against his legs, as if it was shocked and embarrassed by its inability to get excited so soon after it was wrung dry._

 

 _The kiss was his way to silently say,_  ‘thank you, you’ve done a great job.’  _(And the little kiss Jeno managed to give on the little patch of exposed skin of Renjun’s shoulder was, in turn, his own way to say_  ‘and to you too.’ _)_

 

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Somehow, someway, they found themselves leaning on a small third story balcony hidden right underneath the roof of the house, overseeing the hullabaloo of his forgotten houseparty from the quiet vantage point of his secret reading loft. Rich people really do have everything.

 

“They’re looking for you,” Renjun said through the thick cable knit cardigan lent to him by the ever so generous home owner(s). Home owners. As they had to walk through his personal bedroom to go to what Ten said was the  _‘most secluded room in the house, so they can have The Talk’,_ they were inadvertently joined by a worried sick Taeyong (and literally too, he was sick). “Use this,” he fussed, practically smothering an already stuffy-nosed Renjun with his mustard yellow cardigan, picked off the top of a used clothes pile with little to no care. He was thankful, really, but Renjun felt sort of bad when he took a glance back and saw the tuft of red peeking at the top of the fluffy beanbag chair at the corner of the room. “And he should not be sleeping here. It’s cold.”

 

“Stop thinking of others. Think of yourself for once.”

 

He guessed The Talk has started. But before he joined in, Renjun took one last glance at Ten, trying to gauge if the person he’d just met thirty minutes ago was somehow mad at him or not for just being his same ol’ clueless self.

 

“That’s selfish.”

 

"Like they’re not,” the snort he let out made him look far less kinder than he ever did before. He also spoke in a much more pointed tone than the soft, well-mannered one he put up to who he must’ve thought was just an acquaintance of an acquaintance. This is his true self, Renjun noted, and he hung onto each syllables of his words as if they were those of his favourite song. “So, what is it that you want to ask me? Don’t give me  _this_ look, give me the one before this one,” he said while his fingers tried to make perfect circles going around Renjun’s face. But as he has jolly well gotten himself off the drunken ledge with the finish of, as he said, second glass of long island iced tea, Ten could only swish his fingers around in messy zig-zags before continuing on his ramble, “I know it. I know you wanted to ask me something.” He mumbled something about  _‘that’s why I took you here’,_ or something in the likes of that, as he held off a loud burp, “so go on. What is it.”

 

“I have a friend,-”

 

“Of course you do,” Ten cut him short with a giggle, muffled into the corner of his elbow. But when he saw that Renjun was looking at him with wide eyes filled with surprise (that such a sweet looking man could act this rude, probably), he paid it off with an apologetic shrug and an invitation to join his side, sitting on the cold concrete flooring of his balcony. “I’m sorry, please continue.”

 

After he’d found a comfortable enough position, nestled between the two gothic-looking reiling pillars, Renjun let out a loud sigh, “I have a friend and… I like him,”  _Dare I say I love him,_ Renjun almost said, but he had a feeling that it will only cause Ten to let out another burst of laughter at him so he swallowed the words and exchanged it with lighter, more acceptable ones, “but I don’t know if he  _likes me_ to the same extent as I do. I mean, I told myself in the beginning that I’m fine being his… his  _anything,_ really. But well, the heart is the biggest liar and apparently… I’m  _not_ fine," he paused in the middle of his venting session and took another glance at Ten, half expecting him to a.) not listen or b.) have an at least displeasing expression on his face. Renjun was then surely surprised,  _nicely_ surprised when instead of either, he saw a healthy amount of curiosity as Ten gave him an encouraging nod to continue. A sense of relief washed over him, from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, and it felt exactly like the warmth he got every time he took the first sip of his mom's cinnamon-scented hot chocolate. The ultimate comfort. Renjun had to wipe off the wide smile from his face before he could continue on. “He cares for me, I know it. And I thought that’ll be enough to last me years, maybe. Months, at least. I will just care for him on my own terms and not ask for anything in return. I thought I’ll be able to do that. Buuuuut I guess I can't…”

 

“Classic, isn’t it?” Ten scoffed again, but strangely, that one it didn't sound condescending to Renjun at all. The opposite of it, he instead felt pity to this seemingly invincible figure. It was a sound Renjun was somewhat familiar with. It was the sound of a bitter remembrance. “So you love him?”

 

Renjun wasn't ready for such a blunt summation of his roundabout way of explaining things. There was a good minute of silence before he answered back with a shrug, “I guess.”

 

“Then tell him.”

 

“I have!”

 

In the heat of their small banter, Renjun leaped forward and smacked his palms on the ground near Ten's feet. In return, Ten used his own palm to push Renjun back to where he belonged, plopping it on his forehead and causing Renjun to let out an annoyed groan from the shock of having something so warm pressed against his ice cold skin,  _“Really_ tell him.”

 

“I have…” Renjun only answered when he was back on his previous state, slumped lifelessly against the railing.

 

“Has he?” It was as if, instead of answers, Ten was baiting from him his silence. It was frustrating, because Renjun wasn’t a stranger to people using silence to get him to talk. The difference was, unlike his mom, or Jeno, Ten’s silence was not a soft side step that allowed Renjun to choose whether he wanted to answer or not. It was instead a knife to the throat that forced him to answer or else.  _Or else I would chew on your neck until it’s only hanging by a thread of your_ _own_ _muscle._

 

And Renjun would’ve probably still thanked him for that.

 

“We’ve said it so many times I don’t know what it means anymore.” Renjun had to bite his lips shut as they'd begun quivering out of the harsh realisation that struck him head on with the force of a fully-loaded freight train. Because it was true in that they seem to find a secret joy from taking words that might mean a lot to other people, and make it meaningless. As in, I love you, or I hate you, or don’t you dare eat the last oreo in the packet. The  _I love you_  was easy to justify, what with him being constantly filled to the brim with hazardous level of affection and lust that, as Jaemin said, made him feel like he’d been living in a bubble. But everything else? Everything that they did and how easy it was for Jeno to just…  _do?_ His heart took a nasty slashing when Renjun remembered that justifications were only done when there was a nagging feeling stuck at the back of one’s head so pervasive the only way to stave it is to essentially, lie to oneself.

 

Lip service.  _Everything could've just been a lip service, couldn't_ _it_ _?_  How could Renjun know if Jeno's  _love_  is equal to his  _love_? Maybe his  _love_ is more similar to what Renjun would call  _'Yeah, I enjoy how your mouth feels on my lonely cock.'_ He could feel a fresh growth of the tar-fungus spilling out of his ribcage and dripping onto his soured stomach. He didn't know how he could live in a world in which everything that they've done turned out to be something not based on love. Because all this time, yes, he finally admitted, his desperate grasp on the hope that Jeno really did love him, and not the more plausible truth where he only did it just because it was fun, or it was good, or it helped him waste time, was the only source of justification that kept all his self-loathing at bay.

 

Renjun was in no mood of breaking down for the second time in a span of less than thirty minutes, so he quickly gulped down the phantom lump in his throat and coughed out the best diversion he could muster at such a precarious state. Which meant that it wasn't that good of a diversion anyway, because Ten's answer to his question was so simple and pure it made his heart ache even more than it already did. “How did you two first say it?”

 

“I don’t know. I think it was after a  _particularly_  long night,- if you know what I mean,- or maybe before one of us went to work two months in. It just happened one day, I really can’t remember. Sorry, I couldn’t help you on that one.”

 

“But you love him?”

 

“But I love him.” Ten repeated Renjun's words, turning his question into an answer as he unconsciously glanced inside to the direction of an innocuous fluffy bean bag with a simple smile hanging on his lips.

 

 _“Aaand_  he loves you.” Renjun muttered the continuation to his observation into the small space between his knees, trying to further swallow the regret of having The Talk with someone who already has everything that he ever needed, wanted, and hoped for.

 

“I guess," it seemed that Ten could sense the gloom coming from the poor clueless little teenager in droves, as he reached over and gave Renjun's unruly hair a quick ruffle, "well I hope he does.” It did alleviate a little bit of Renjun's mental burden, but it didn't answer any of his original questions. Not that he'd asked anything, that's true. But he'd hoped that from how Ten has managed to overhear, oversee, and  _overfeel_  him, he'd figure out the unknown mysterious  _Thing_  that's been bothering him.

 

“Ask him.”

 

Although, the moment Ten said the  _Thing,_ in the middle of their  _Talk,_ Renjun couldn't help but let out a particularly loud and bitter laughter. A kind of relief that came out of people exposing you from an embarrassing secret because hey, at least after the pitiful laughter and the sharp, cold pain has run its course through your veins, nobody has to pretend again that nothing ever happened.

 

Unknown? Perplexing? Ungraspable? Yeah, right. It's always been there. Renjun just always refused to  _see._ As it was on their first night ever together, back when they took each other's first kiss, Renjun knew that Jeno would never push onto him things or requests before securing from him a concrete  _yes._ He would cast a bait, sow little seeds of ideas, give Renjun little nudges and he'd wait. Always. He'd wait until Renjun came to him with an agreement in a varying degree of faux exasperation. So wasn't  _This,_ just like  _That?_

 

How unfair of him to project onto Jeno something that might’ve been false all along. Spending his time burying his head in the sand and worrying over something that probably didn’t even  _have_ to be worried about. How stupid.

 

 _I have to be the one to take charge for once, aren't I?_ Renjun thought. And from the little giggle that escaped from Ten's mouth that has retreated behind his bundle of scarf, seemed that he too agreed with his long overdue conclusion. And with his realisation, Renjun could feel that the rot has stopped multiplying. It was still there, no point in denying that. But it’d stopped its journey of blind conquest with a screeching halt and Renjun finally could take his first relieved breath in so long knowing that he was no longer in mortal danger. Truthfully, he never was.

 

“Did  _you_  ask him?” Renjun nodded his head and rested his chin at the top of his knees, finally shedding all his safeguards and letting Ten see him for what he really was. A teen lost in all the wonders the world could offer him.

 

 _“He_  asked me," Ten let out his first genuine ringing laughter when he saw the utter shock painted on Renjun's face, “see? If he can do it, so can you." He only ever did hear that sound once before, but he already missed it the second time it came around and Renjun regretted not recording the entirety of their talk on his phone because he already knew that he'd miss all of this not even five minutes after going inside the taxi that would take him and Yukhei back to their stuffy budget hotel. "If you're wondering, I said yes. Right away. Didn't even let him finish before I answered.”

 

“Well what if he says no. I’ll  _fucking_  die,- no, no just kidding I…“ Renjun did a quick take on Ten’s reaction to his morbid joke, not knowing how a stranger would react to something that might poorly translate on someone that doesn’t share the same lighthearted outlook on life and morbidity as he did. Even Jeno was initially surprised by how often Renjun joked about death (or talked about it. Basically the sheer amount of fascination he has with it). He was worried that Ten would only see him as just another  _edgy_ teen, or even worse, someone so sensitive he’ll need all the protection in the world just to survive the winter. It was then a source of gladness for him when he only saw Ten nodding in agreement and mouthing the word  _‘relatable’._  He sighed another breath onto his knees and continued, “That’s his choice, isn’t it? I guess I’ll see how much I can hold on to my initial promise if that’s the case.”

 

Right after he finished his sentence, as if the universe has been listening in on their talks and were waiting for the perfect moment to gave her divine intervention, Renjun’s phone buzzed to life from his jeans’ back pocket. Initially he was going to ignore it, as looking on your phone in the middle of such an important Talk would’ve just put another dent on the Millennial’s already disreputable reputation (he forgot the crucial fact that Ten, just like him, was also a millennial), but that proved to be an impossibility as the buzzes went on past a normal two or three into the realm of annoying, non-stop set of twelve or fifteen. As the strong vibrations were making his bum itch, Renjun finally relented and fished his phone out from his pocket only to see a row of notifications coming from, who else, Jeno.

 

How could he forget? 11 PM. He surely had just finished getting ready for bed and was just cuddling under his rendition of a budget hotel’s duvet before sending Renjun his daily dose of  _‘what I did today’._ Renjun remembered telling him to just post it in his instagram story or something, and not to log up their chat window with endless rows of magical landscapes that Renjun couldn’t help but describe as  _lush._ But then Jeno told him that no, he didn’t take these for instagram, that those pictures were taken because something in the scene reminded Jeno of him, somehow, and why they were then only for him to see.

 

“Is that him?”

 

Renjun let out a silent apology for breaking his promise with Jeno that he will not share the picture to anyone else when he handed his phone to Ten and let him browse that day’s daily roll.

 

 _“Aww,_ pretty.”

 

“I’ll take it that you mean the  _scenery_  is pretty.”

 

Ten’s free laughter slowly grew more mild the more he scrolled his thumb through the pictures. He must’ve reached yesterday’s set before something must’ve happened on the screen that caused him to have a split second change in his calm expression, in which a sliver of surprise made way to a wide smile before he returned the phone to its rightful owner.

 

One look was all it took for him to find out what made such a change. Actually, Renjun  _didn’t_ even have to see, as it’d happen on each and every night they spent apart that he’d known the words written on the white text bubble as if they were tattooed on the back of his hand.

 

_‘Don’t forget to tell me about your day too!_

_I’ll read it first thing in the morning._

_Good night!’_

_L.J.N_

 

Renjun mulled over the words and thought that these should count as some form of love. It must be. Even if their declaration of  _love_  was indeed empty, didn’t they find its substitute in unusual ways that secretly  _must have_  conveyed their love for each other? Jeno's near automatic speech of  _nothing they did is wrong,_ for when Renjun’s anxiety has grown into such level that it was reflected on his face _,_ for example. Love. The hand that held his every time he struggled to climb that one particularly difficult step at the park? Love. How Jeno would beam everytime Renjun called his name?

 

He knew Renjun loved him. He must’ve known. The fact that he stayed, and the fact that he did everything that he has been doing, Jeno probably was also playing the exact same game he was struggling with, at the exact same time. A game marred not with lies, but with truth that has finally reared its complete form, truth that was finally allowed to grow and be fully accepted by himself, in the period of time where Renjun didn’t have his coddling emotional crutch at an arm’s reach.

 

He was sure that Jeno  _knew_ it. He must have. They’ve only never told each other that. At least not  _really._

 

"I'm sorry for dumping it all on you," Renjun used the sleeves of his borrowed cardigan to quickly swipe the edges of his eyes, as he didn’t want to let any tears fall and ruin his night that’d somehow ended on a high note even if he was taken around on such a wild emotional roller coaster ride, "I do have a friend,- I'm not that pathetic, don't worry,- but he… has his own agenda and stuff and,-"

 

"Don't worry.” Ten once again slipped his still magically warm fingers in between Renjun’s freezing strands of hair and ruffled it to the high heavens. This time, Renjun only took it in stride as he no longer had the fear and suspicion that he was doing it out of condescension. “Isn’t that what strangers are supposed to do? They listen." He then offered Renjun his hand, helping him get back up to his feet and gesturing for him to get back into the reading loft so he could warm himself up while he waited for Ten to finish a quick drag.

 

“Oh, by the way,” hearing his name being called, Renjun turned himself around just in time to catch the rest of Ten’s low mumble, what with him having an unlit cigarette hanging precariously on the right corner of his lips, “we talked for one and a half hours. I win.”

  


_

 

Yukhei was looking surprisingly chill when they bumped into each other at the kitchen’s backdoor. Him digging through the cardboard box of canned green tea left unceremoniously under the barren flower pot, and Renjun being held around his shoulders by a visibly cheerful Ten.

 

“Can we go home? It’s nearly 12,” he said while he shyly (which meant, uncharacteristically) tugged at the sleeve of Yukhei’s sweater.

 

Before he answered, Yukhei made sure to link his eyes with Ten, making sure he saw and understood the little knowing nod before he directed his attention fully to Renjun, “I was just starting to think of the lies I have to tell auntie if I can’t get ahold of you by midnight.”

 

Being the worst liar that he was, even his silence spoke a thousand truths. It would’ve probably been better if Yukhei just went ahead and give Renjun a super obvious  _‘wink-wink-nudge-nudge’_ because just by seeing the bright smile unfolding on his face, Renjun easily learned that the night’s event unfolded not just by mere chance or coincidence. Though Renjun quickly decided that he didn’t want to make a fuss about that. He didn’t want to  _care,_ or think of anything that would cause his mind to reel out of control. The night had happened for a reason and whether the reason was fate, or a quick deal struck between Yukhei and Ten, it already happened and it was good just the way it was. So Renjun flicked his head in the more usual gesture of his compensated arrogance and asked, “How far have you gotten?”

 

“Not much,” the little giggle he let out before continuing his sentence really did put Renjun back to his place, “kidnapped by a pack of emo vandalists, that’s a start.”

 

It was at that moment when Ten gave them both a pat on their backs and told them that he’d called them a taxi to take them back where they belonged. Farewell greetings in the realm of  _‘nice meeting you again man,’_ and  _‘wish it could’ve been longer’_ was thrown all around Renjun’s head and he could only stood by the wayside of this river of long-lost friendship like the awkward little outsider he was. It wasn’t until Ten pulled him into a sudden hug did he let his stiff shoulder drop at his sides and he allowed himself another lungfull of a relieved exhale.

 

Goodbyes always happened much too awkwardly for his likings that Renjun was  _always_ glad for when it ended. Even then he was glad, happy to leave the stranger that grew not to be and then  _back_ to one in record time by walking through Ten’s long winding porch and letting the sound of gravels grinding underneath his shoes be a sort of remedy for the returning ‘ _I don’t know what to say because you’re my family but I don’t want to bother seek a conversation starter_ because _you’re family’_ silence between him and Yukhei.

 

“Had fun?”

 

Renjun looked down onto his phone screen, onto the safely guarded little message that Ten and a surprisingly enthusiastic Taeyong helped create. A message that he would copy and paste onto their chatbox later tonight, or that morning, before he would press his thumb on the send button at the very last second that he could no longer put sleep at bay.

 

Renjun looked at the little treasure he never thought could ever be unearthed and smiled, “Surprisingly? Yeah.”

  


_

 

_‘Jeno, let’s meet up at the park near your place on the 3rd???_

_I know that’s not even a day after your flight back_ _  
_ _but I have something that I really need to show you._

_Tell me now if you can’t make it.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘Ooooooohhhh what is it? I’m curious_

_3rd is perfect, sure you don’t wanna just go to my place?_

_Mom and dad already have to go to work (｀▽´)’_

_L.J.N_

 

_‘Park first, your place later :P._

_I. Need. Fresh. Air._

_Good?’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘Lolol of course._

_Have fun today! Don’t kill Yukhei?’_

_L.J.N_

 

_‘H a h. I’ll TRY not to._

_You too take care. Don’t let a tentacle monster catch you off guard.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘Off guard?_

_Dude you /know/ I’m actively seeking it._

_There is no /off guard/ in my dictionary.’_

_L.J.N_

 

_‘Disgusting.’_

_H.R.J_

 

_‘Aw thanks!_

_Love you <3.’_

_L.J.N_

 

_‘...._

_Love you too._

_Pervert.’_

_H.R.J_

  


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.

 

.

 

.

 

_(And the little kiss Jeno managed to give on the little patch of exposed skin of Renjun’s shoulder was, in turn, his own way to say ‘thank you.’)_

 

Look at him,  _Renjun thought, after he’d tidied up and managed to hastily reach for his discarded t-shirt and used it as a makeshift towel to clean the mess that they’ve both made._  Vulnerable and loose and… floppy.  _Jeno beckoned for him to come closer and he did. How could he not, when the eyes that called for him were ones that seemed to be standing in the precipice of reality and a dream named bliss._  Look at him, he’s mine.

 

_“You’re a fucking god.”_

 

_“... If you say so, then I guess I am.”_

 

 _Jeno’s smile was mirrored that day in the sun and Renjun_ _had_ _never felt the urge to say I love you more than on that silent, darkened late autumn evening. Every inch, every last particle on his body wanted him to say_  I love you.  _But the pain in his chest was too dreadful for it to ever be soothed by such a measly combination of words that by then they’d said nearly_ _every day_ _to each other. At school during break time, just before they parted ways,_ _in_ _their midnight chats. Renjun’d said I love you to Jeno more often than he’d said his name which, was something that Jeno seemed to cherish with all his heart. So much so that_ _this_ _one peep of the word has the power to cause him to drop whatever it was that he was doing, only so that he could give Renjun the single most warmest smile ever displayed in the wide gallery of human emotion._

 

 _And so he did just that. Renjun whispered his name, over and over and over until he felt like he was nearly suffocating from how tight Jeno had his arms coiling around his chest. He then encouraged Jeno to inch closer to him. Even closer._  Much, much closer than that, _never satisfied until he had Jeno lying right on top of him. Until every inch of their bodies were pressed against the other’s and Renjun was fully subjected to the entirety of Jeno’s imposing body weight. His back was aching and his head was getting light from the lack of oxygen but that_ _was_ _fine. At the very least, he wanted a certain sense of physical discomfort_ _in_ _his relationship with Jeno, because if not_ _,_ _everything felt too good_ _,_ _it’s terrifying. Everything felt too nice, fell too perfectly in place with Jeno that Renjun just wanted to believe that something, anything in their ‘relationship’ could be imperfect. Blur this pain in his heart to be something else than an over abundance of love and affection because he didn’t know how to live his life if that was really the case._

 

_“What should we do?” There was a slight tremble on Jeno’s voice and it caused Renjun to tighten his hold around his back, marvelling on the fact that he was still able to do so despite them not having anymore space to spare in between them._

 

 _“Stay,”_  nothing more, nothing less, _“just stay.”_

 

_“Good,” it was marvellous how he could hear a smile forming on Jeno’s lips just by the change in the sound of his relieved exhale, “staying sounds nice.”_

 

_We can do stay._

 

 _And when afterwards, after they’_ _d_ _settled so nicely between each_ _other’s_ _arms and Jeno was so exhausted and intoxicated he failed to gauge the location of his kiss that it landed on Renjun’s bottom eyelashes, he knew. Perfectly._

 

_I’m his._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes excuse me but as I said, this story is the entirety of my life ksjdcsd I love them so much sobs  
> So if it seems that I have a hard time moving away from this series, please do pardon me
> 
> The next installment will be the last one aaaaaand get ready because with the current trend, the total word count might hit the 30k realm.
> 
> hmu @ my twitter [@moon__soil](https://twitter.com/moon__soil) ~


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